


tooth fairy

by downmoon



Series: the family album [6]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, littles growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downmoon/pseuds/downmoon
Summary: Tobio loses his first tooth. Suga takes it upon himself to educate his family about the finer things in life.





	tooth fairy

**Author's Note:**

> the tooth fairy isn't a thing in Japan; they throw baby teeth towards the floor or ceiling in a straight line, in hopes that this will encourage the new adult teeth to grow in straight.

When Suga slips through the door to Shouyou and Tobio’s classroom, it’s not Shou bowling over the other kids to get to him first. Tobio bounces over in his painting smock, a smudge of blue paint on his cheek, holding a small white envelope in his hand.

“What’s this?” Suga says as Tobio shoves the envelope in his hand. Tobio doesn’t answer; instead, he hooks his fingers in his mouth and pulls his lower lip down. It’s like one of the faces he pulls at Shouyou right before they launch into a wrestling match on the floor, but today there’s a gap between Tobio’s bottom teeth.

“What happened to your tooth?!” Suga exclaims in alarm, hands falling to Tobio’s little shoulders. Tobio is unfazed, even happy, those cute dimples pressed into the sides of his cheeks.   
  
“I ‘ost it!” Tobio says, fingers still pulling his mouth. Suga frowns, still confused, until one of the teachers intervenes.

“He lost it today,” she explains with a smile. “There was, ah, a bit of a scuffle during freetime today, but the nurse checked it out and Tobio’s doing just fine.”

“That’s my tooth!” Tobio says, fingertips twitching over the envelope crushed in Suga’s grip. Suga’s eyes go wide, opening the envelope at Tobio’s insistence. A perfect little baby tooth lays innocently inside, and the part of Suga’s heart that’s grown inexplicably attached to this dark-haired boy grinning at his side swells in pride and crumples in the despair of this boy growing up so quickly.   
  
“Wow, Tobio! What a special day you’ve had. We’ll leave this tooth under your pillow tonight for the tooth fairy.”

A frown furrows across Tobio’s forehead as Shouyou scrambles over, paint stains scattered over his face, his hair, his hands, and now Suga’s pants. “Suga-san,” Tobio says as Shouyou stomps and bounces beside him, “what’s a tooth fairy?”   
  
Watching how active Shouyou is, Suga has a vivid idea of _how_ exactly Tobio lost his tooth today, but the two little faces peering up at him, burning with curiosity, prove to be quite the distraction. Suga grins with the delight of sharing a story with these two flourishing minds. “Let’s get ready to go, and I’ll tell you all about it on the way home.”  They both rush to put away their paint smocks and gather up their things, faster and better-behaved than Suga’s ever seen them. In no time flat, he has two little boys hanging on his every word as they make the walk back to his apartment.

 

“Daddy!”

Tobio barrels for the door when Daichi slips through, jumping into his arms before Daichi even has his shoes off. Shouyou follows at the sound of excitement, dancing around Daichi’s spilled briefcase. Suga can’t hear over the sound of two wound-up kids, but he can see Tobio pull his mouth open again, and the perplexion in Daichi’s expression shift to surprise.   
  
“Suga-san told me about the fairies!” Tobio says. Daichi’s surprise slides from Tobio to Suga, who deems it appropriate to grin cheekily as he wrangles Shou and picks up Daichi's briefcase.

“We had a very important lesson on the way home from school about the tooth fairy,” Suga informs him.

“Tooth fairy?” Daichi asks with a skeptical brow raised. Tobio squirms out of his arms, in search of the tooth Suga had stashed safely out of reach from curious little hands. Daichi can’t even get his shoes off before Tobio hurries back and demands his attention. And then comes a thorough examination of Tobio’s tooth, and Daichi doesn’t miss his cues for “oohs” and “aahs.” Daichi performs a very fatherly inspection of the gap in Tobio’s teeth and deems it acceptable, dismissing him with a thorough ruffling of Tobio’s hair, which sends him off with a squeal. Shou chases after, and Daichi finally has a moment to kick off his shoes and loosen his tie.

“Hi,” Suga says, getting his welcome home kiss, “dinner isn’t burnt.”

“Oh? Moving on up in the world, are we?”

“Tobio and Shou got along this evening, more like. No distractions. He’s been in a good mood since I picked them up this afternoon.”

Daichi nods, tie slipping over his head, top button coming undone. He heads towards the bedroom as Suga starts pulling bowls and chopsticks out of the drawers. “Boys, come get dinner!” Suga yells. Two sets of footsteps thunder across the living room and end with the screech of chairs. Shou always takes some coaxing to settle in any kind of environment where he’s expected to sit still; luckily, Daichi, dressed in torn sweatpants and a threadbare t-shirt, slips into Suga’s cramped kitchen and keeps him in line.

It’s a normal, if somewhat more pleasant evening. Shouyou and Tobio only squabble a couple of times, easily distracted by Daichi. Suga catches Tobio prodding the empty spot between his teeth with the end of his chopstick, grains of rice stuck to his round cheeks. The boys help clear the dishes and get popsicles for their efforts, only dodging the call for bathtime a few times. Pajamas and toothpaste, one escape attempt by Shouyou, Tobio’s dash for the envelope with his tooth, and they’re both in bed with minimal fuss.

Suga joins Daichi in the kitchen, tackling the dishes in the sink as Daichi preps the boys’ lunches. Suga cracks an enormous yawn and Daichi cocks his head to look at him with a teasing grin tucked into the corner of his mouth. Suga ignores him, a smile of his own folded away, and starts loading the dishwasher. It’s become routine, this cleanup, blissfully domestic and comfortable in a grungy sweatpants, paint-covered jeans kind of way. Suga chases off another yawn and closes the dishwasher.

They started another one of Daichi’s murder documentaries last night, and it’d been almost impossible to keep from watching it while Daichi was at work, but he’d managed, heroically, although it’s been on his mind nearly the whole day. So when he flops down onto the couch next to Daichi, he’s surprised it isn’t already playing, surprised that Daichi’s staring at him with a strange look on his face.  
  
“What?” Suga asks, indignant that the screen isn’t filled with evidence and character witnesses yet.  
  
“So what’s this tooth fairy?” Daichi asks, and Suga nearly laughs at how similar he sounds to his son.  
  
“I forget that not everyone in Japan had the childhood I did,” Suga says behind a smile. “It’s something my dad told me and my sister about when we were growing up. When you lose a tooth, you’re supposed to put it under your pillow when you go to sleep. The next morning the tooth will be gone, but the _tooth fairy_ will have left you some money in exchange for it.”

“So it’s some kind of creepy pixie that breaks into your house at night and steals your teeth.”

“No, Daichi!” Suga says, hiding his laugh behind a thump to Daichi’s chest. “It’s cute. Certainly better than throwing a tooth on the floor.”  
  
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Daichi says. He squeezes Suga’s flailing hand against his chest, pulling him closer when Suga stops trying to pull away. “So– your dad came up with this?”

“He’s American,” Suga offers, “pretty sure it’s a tradition over there. My parents divorced when I was ten, but my mom kept the tooth fairy going until we lost all our baby teeth.”

“Where’s your dad now?” Daichi asks gently. Suga rests his head against Daichi’s chest, a weight of hesitation settling over his tongue for a moment.   
  
“He’s back in America. California, last I knew. When my sister met Shou’s father, my dad had a hard time with that. He emails pretty regularly, but I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Suga falls silent after the admission; he doesn’t often speak openly about his family, and it’s not always a comfortable conversation to have, regardless of how deeply he trusts Daichi. But Daichi’s solid warmth, his steady heartbeat under the palm of Suga’s hand is an effortless comfort, and when Daichi breathes _“sorry,”_ against the crown of Suga’s head, he smiles despite the ache in his heart.  
  
“So you’re not gonna disappoint your son, are you?” Suga asks lightly. He feels the rumble of Daichi’s uneasy laugh from his place against Daichi’s chest.  
  
“I’m not a tooth fairy,” Daichi murmurs, “and I’m not an American. I don’t know the first thing about doing this.”

“It's not _hard,”_ Suga says, “you just go in there when he's asleep, take the tooth under his pillow, and leave him some money.”

“Well, how much do I leave him? When do I go in there? What if he wakes up?”

“Daichi,” Suga says, all sugary, coaxing sweetness, “you're overthinking this. Your son sleeps like a rock. Lucky for him, because Shouyou’s quite the chatterbox when he sleeps. Just give him an hour to settle down and go in there and leave some money. The tooth is in the envelope he got from school, and I had him help me clear up some of the toys in there just so the tooth fairy could get through. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Suga crooks his head to look at Daichi. There’s a scowl on his face, strikingly similar to the ones always passing across Tobio’s face, and it makes Suga smile brightly. He presses a kiss to the corner of Daichi’s mouth, and, charmed, the scowl falls form Daichi’s face, those soft little dimples pressing into Daichi’s cheeks as he smiles in return.

“I love you,” Suga says. Daichi claims a real kiss, but when he pulls away– “Also, I’m pretty sure Shouyou has something to do with Tobio’s missing tooth.”  
  
“Are you serious?” Daichi says, a bubble of laughter tumbling out of his mouth. Suga shushes him lest he wake up the boys, even as he tries to smother his own laughter.

Finally, Daichi puts on his documentary as Suga curls into his side. It's not long into the episode that Suga feels that warm buzz of drowsiness settle into his eyes, only briefly disturbed when Daichi's gets up after a while and ten returns, looking smugly proud of himself. Suga kisses him again in reward, and shortly catches himself nodding off. Daichi's answer to that is turning off the TV and ushering him into the bedroom, taking great pains to tuck him into bed like one of the boys, and graciously taking it when Suga's outrage results in a painful jab to the ribs. Wrapped up in Daichi's arms, Suga soon drifts off to sleep, dozy and content.

 

Suga wakes up to the sound of thumping feet and Daichi’s shushing voice following the footsteps down the hallway. There’s a soft sliver of light between the shade and the window. Suga squints blearily at the clock on his side table, and wrinkles his nose at the early hour. Despite Daichi’s early schedule, Suga still hates these early morning hours. He yawns and stretches his arms overhead, trying to shake the sleep from his eyes long enough to say goodbye to Daichi and the boys before they leave for the day.

The kitchen is far too energetic for Suga, but he smiles and smooths hair when the boys rush him. There’s a wad of bills in Tobio’s hand, and Suga frowns in the commotion of noise, until Shouyou quiets down and he’s able to hear Tobio.

“Look what the tooth fairy brought!”

Suga’s eyebrows slowly raise towards the mess of his bedhead as he counts out– “4600 yen?!? Daichi–! Ah, Daichi, did you see what the tooth fairy left. _How much_ he left?”

“Yep,” Daichi answers nonchalantly. “Tobio, go put that in your piggy bank so it doesn’t get lost.”

“But I want ice cream.”

“We can get ice cream tonight, alright?”

Tobio scowls, but he scampers off to his room, Shouyou following close behind. Suga’s strained smile hasn’t left his face. “What a generous tooth fairy we’ve got,” he says, as Daichi dumps the rest of his coffee and rinses out his cup.   
  
“Yeah?” he says. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Oh, no, no, not at all. We’ve just got 39 more baby teeth to lose in this house, and you’ve set the standard with the first tooth. Hope you’re prepared.”

A frown creases across Daichi’s forehead, but the boys come running back into the kitchen, backpacks haphazardly slipped over their shoulders. Suga ushers them towards the door and helps with shoes and coats and tucking little arms into straps. They each get a hug and a promise of seeing him later that afternoon as Daichi slips on his shoes and his blazer and gathers his bag.

“Have a good day,” Suga says, _“tooth fairy.”_ He kisses the frown on Daichi’s mouth and shoos him out the door. Bed is calling his name again, and he’d like to get another hour or so of sleep before Daichi starts frantically texting him as he realizes just what he’s started with this tooth fairy business.


End file.
